Early June I planted my heirloom potatoes. They are seriously the easiest veggie to grow, just dig a hole and wait three months. Even if the Colorado Potato Beetle finds your garden, potatoes are so hardy, they can produce impressive yields with just a third of their foliage.

One little seed potato can produce a dozen larger potatoes in a season. Some varieties of fingerling potatoes can produce over two dozen twisty tubers.

Each variety has their own distinct flavor. Crescent fingerlings taste slightly like peanuts. Reds and Purples are earthy. Sunday, we feasted on creamy German Butterballs, my favorite baking potato. They keep for several months in the fridge, but I having a feeling that my supply will be gone by October.

Do you grow potatoes? What are your favorites?

In between rain showers this past weekend, I did a little weeding in the garden. Ever notice how the weeds grow about four feet every time it rains? Anyway, while walking through my potatoes, I spotted a Colorado Potato Beetle. The adults are quite artistic-looking little round-backed guys. They’d be almost cute if they didn’t deconstruct my potatoes.

But they do. They crawl out of the dirt where they’ve overwintered and lay their eggs on the underside of the potato plants. The eggs hatch and the larvae (which are not cute by any stretch of the imagination, but frankly, what larvae are?) defoliate the potatoes for their own lunch.

These guys pestered me last year, so this year I waited to plant potatoes, hoping most had completed their lifecycle before my potatoes had leaves. I might have outsmarted some, but certainly not all.

So I spent an hour last night turning over every leaf on every plant and removing all the leaves that had eggs on them I could find. I tossed eggs and adults in a bucket of soapy water. I don’t know if it drowned them or just got them really clean, but I hope it’ll at least reduce the pest population to manageable levels. I’ll do another run-through in a day or two to see what I missed.

Now, I just have to figure out what to do about cucumber beetles and bacterial wilt. I think that’s what plagued my cuke crop last year and I’m afraid for my melons this year. Got any ideas or advice on managing pests of the kitchen garden? What critters attack your efforts? What do you do about them? How effective are organic solutions? If you could totally get rid of just one nemesis, what would it be?

Do potatoes go to seed?

Because we eat (and plant) only the tubers, I always assumed that potato plants reproduced exclusively under the soil. I mean, aren’t most planting potatoes clones of other potatoes? (This is also why the Irish potato famine was so catastrophic — all spuds were clones of the same spud.)

Then my potato plants blossomed with pretty white flowers. And now, they bend with the weight of hard, little green fruits. (When I crack’em open, they look like eggplant inside– full of tiny seeds surrounded by tight white flesh.)

Piecing together what I remember from my 11th grade botany class, it

The past few weeks, some of potato plants started to yellow. No signs of fungus or insects, I assumed my row of Kerr Pinks were hot weather wimps and would bounce back as soon as the weather cooled.

When the plants started to brown and hang in limp arcs, I knew they were goners. Three healthy rows remained. Their safety was more important then reviving my Kerr quitters.

I grabbed the plants firmly at the base, half expecting them to crumble in my hands. As I ripped the roots from the soil, it started to rumble. My withered stems were suddenly very heavy and very determined to stay in the ground.

I pulled harder, this time with both hands. The soil suddenly yielded — And out popped a handful of potatoes!

My Kerr Pinks weren’t quitters. They were early finishers! And quite tasty fried in olive oil and garlic.